Write your first reactions to this final field experience here. They don't need to be of any length, just write what sticks out in your mind about your last lesson.
What stuck out to me was how difficult the lesson was. I felt like I did a much better job with second period last week than this week. The problem seemed to stem from them "kind of understanding" what was going on, they would explain a concept improperly or with strange language, and continuously loop that sort of thinking. Even after we established information about a graph, they still didn't seem to grasp most of the lesson and a lot of that I felt I could have done better. Having gone through the lesson once moderately successfully, I expected things to go much smoother. The lesson went okay, but nothing stuck out for my group.
-Marcus Edgette
I felt this lesson went really well for me and if I were to have had about 10 more minutes, I my students would have completely understood so many of the concepts they were putting out there. I spent almost the whole time on one graph but I feel this was time well spent. My three students continually were excited and gave new ideas, so many we didn't have time to explore them all, and it was great exploration for them. I feel their thinking and thoughts were more important than them getting the "right" graph. They were open to discuss and try everything put on the table by one another. One thing which bothers me was, in the end, they were so close to the idea of a straight line means constant speed and a curved line means changing. Right as the bell was about to ring, one student even said something to the effect of trying a constant decrease. It was tough not to say okay lets try that when we could not because of lack of time. I feel that they were thinking critically as well as out of the box to try and get what they needed.
Katey Cook
I felt like this week did not go as well as last week.The atmosphere is very different in Laura's classroom as compared to Tony's. I felt like she was a little more....hesitant? to give us free reign and do our thing... Our group kept having a few things trip us up. First, our CBR began to give us error messages, people kept walking into our CBR path (including Laura a few times) so we would attempt the graphs more than necessary to get a roughly equivalent copy of the graph sheet. Last night, as I review my lesson, I decided to be loose (depending on student understanding) about which graphs I was going to compare at what time and I reflected on my pacing (which I felt was great last time). When it came time to do comparisons in this class I felt we didn't go as deep. My pacing kept getting thrown off because of the little issues with the CBR. I kept and eye on the clock and had planned to use the last few minutes to wrap up the lesson then Laura came around and told us time was up, so I was unable to address the positive vs negative slopes on each graph (which was a portion of our main objective)
Overall, I was a little disappointed in how it went after how confident I felt last time. My students were almost equally prepared prior knowledge-wise, but I did not accomplish as many of my objectives this class.
Tori Ward
I thought today’s lesson went pretty well. Even though the three students had never interacted with me before, each of them did a great job. They all participated willingly, and seemed to have some fun with the lesson. We made a lot of progress and covered some good ideas such as positive and negative slope. If we had ten to fifteen more minutes I think we could have computed the different slopes of the elevator graph, which was our launch problem. We used the unit-rate concept that the students had used for their warm up to touch on the floors per second rate. I don’t think the group totally understood this as we ran out of time to really drive the idea in. It was nice to see the kids enjoy using the CBRs and after two sessions of using them I could see the CBRs as being very useful to explore slope ideas in the classroom. It would be nice to see these students again for a second day so we could build on the discoveries we made today. We may have not gotten to each and every objective of our lesson, but the students were making progress and almost accomplished all of our goals.
Mike Freeland
I only had two students to work with this time, and I was very encouraged with the progress they made. Both students took turns holding the calculator and walking and had very good insights into what walking patterns caused which type of graph. By the end of the class period, we were even discussing what the y-axis and x-axis meant. I felt this students cooperated with me and listened well, so we were able to make it through a number of sample graphs. One thing we tried today that we did not try with last week's lesson was to have students actually write down their ideas for how to walk. I thought this was great because it forced them to put their thoughts into words as well as gave us a good indicator of what they were thinking. While we never mentioned the word slope, I think these students began to understand how rates of change related to a graph, and this will hopefully be useful for future discussion in their mathematics classroom.
Mandi Mills
I had a group where one of the students was one of the student I observed the first time we were at linden grove, however I also got two students I hadn't met and they felt as though they should play tricks on me and tell me what they thought would be funny. After introductions and launching into the lesson I felt like the only student in the group who was taking the assignment even semi-serious was the young lady I had observed before. I was extremely disappointed because they seemed to be just throwing out what they thought I wanted to hear and not thinking at all about what it meant mathematically. At the end even the young lady who I felt like I was getting through to seemed to only want the answers and to not have to think about what the graph meant and what the concept meant. This was a complete shock for me as I had taught the advanced class both of the other times and they were extremely willing to work where as these average students seemed uninterested and unwilling to work on the assignment given. Overall I say it was much harder to teach to the middle than to the higher level students.
Denise Slate
My field experience the other day was reasonable. I felt I was able to give them information more efficiently in their learning development. I started graphs on paper first then I introduced the ranger program. I liked how I changed my lesson plan also to help benefit students needs. The use of simple algorithms helped the students better understand the use of simple units to determine slope. The rise over run equation was better for students to also understand what slope meant. Compared to my last lesson i feel a gained a better understanding of asking students questions that made them gain an understanding of the mathematics being involved.
Fredrick Martin
I felt that this lesson went really well, but I did run out of time at the end of class and was not able to leave them with a good summary. The three students that I were able to get the graphs to look just like we wanted them, and the students holding the CBR and calculator did a really good job coaching the student walking the graph. Just like last class, the students wanted to try walking the graph before talking about what they were going to do and all had different ideas of what to do. When I was able to get them to explain how they were going to walk the graph they were all good with figuring out when they needed to walk faster or slower, figuring out the distance to walk and for how long. I really liked teaching this lesson because you are getting up and out of your seat, and the students are kept pay attention throughout the lesson because it is something that they have never done before that is fun for them.
Bret Van Zanten
For my final field experience I must admit I was not very happy with the way it went. I know that we did not have enough students for the second hour group to teach, which was the hour that I taught. This ended up with me having two students who were borrowed from another class. I felt that this was unfair because the two boys I had did not seem to want to be there and seemed quite unenthusiastic about the lesson. I was not expecting this because the previous lessons before Tori’s from first hour and the with the groups from Mr. Wine’s class went very well and the kids seemed to enjoy working with the CBRs. I didn’t really know how to get them excited and sort of fell into the trap of wanting the lesson to just be over with. I wish I would have gotten to teach students that were actually in Ms. Yarger’s second hour to see if it was because these students were just helping out and not really wanting to be or if it was something I was doing.
Kaitlin Froehlke
Overall, I am pleased with how my final field experience turned out. I still funneled a little, but compared to the other two lessons, I improved. This was my second time teaching only two students. I like how students got more one on one attention, but it is nice to have more students that can contribute different ideas. The students enjoyed working with the CBRs, so I was able to have fun with the lesson, which made it more enjoyable. I feel I was able to conclude this lesson better than I did the first time I taught it. I believe this made all the difference when it comes to my opinion on the lesson. The first time teaching rates of change, I was so down on myself because I felt I didn't wrap anything up. I made sure to fix that for this experience, and it worked out well!
Hailey McDonell
What stuck out to me was how difficult the lesson was. I felt like I did a much better job with second period last week than this week. The problem seemed to stem from them "kind of understanding" what was going on, they would explain a concept improperly or with strange language, and continuously loop that sort of thinking. Even after we established information about a graph, they still didn't seem to grasp most of the lesson and a lot of that I felt I could have done better. Having gone through the lesson once moderately successfully, I expected things to go much smoother. The lesson went okay, but nothing stuck out for my group.
-Marcus Edgette
I felt this lesson went really well for me and if I were to have had about 10 more minutes, I my students would have completely understood so many of the concepts they were putting out there. I spent almost the whole time on one graph but I feel this was time well spent. My three students continually were excited and gave new ideas, so many we didn't have time to explore them all, and it was great exploration for them. I feel their thinking and thoughts were more important than them getting the "right" graph. They were open to discuss and try everything put on the table by one another. One thing which bothers me was, in the end, they were so close to the idea of a straight line means constant speed and a curved line means changing. Right as the bell was about to ring, one student even said something to the effect of trying a constant decrease. It was tough not to say okay lets try that when we could not because of lack of time. I feel that they were thinking critically as well as out of the box to try and get what they needed.
Katey Cook
I felt like this week did not go as well as last week.The atmosphere is very different in Laura's classroom as compared to Tony's. I felt like she was a little more....hesitant? to give us free reign and do our thing... Our group kept having a few things trip us up. First, our CBR began to give us error messages, people kept walking into our CBR path (including Laura a few times) so we would attempt the graphs more than necessary to get a roughly equivalent copy of the graph sheet. Last night, as I review my lesson, I decided to be loose (depending on student understanding) about which graphs I was going to compare at what time and I reflected on my pacing (which I felt was great last time). When it came time to do comparisons in this class I felt we didn't go as deep. My pacing kept getting thrown off because of the little issues with the CBR. I kept and eye on the clock and had planned to use the last few minutes to wrap up the lesson then Laura came around and told us time was up, so I was unable to address the positive vs negative slopes on each graph (which was a portion of our main objective)
Overall, I was a little disappointed in how it went after how confident I felt last time. My students were almost equally prepared prior knowledge-wise, but I did not accomplish as many of my objectives this class.
Tori Ward
I thought today’s lesson went pretty well. Even though the three students had never interacted with me before, each of them did a great job. They all participated willingly, and seemed to have some fun with the lesson. We made a lot of progress and covered some good ideas such as positive and negative slope. If we had ten to fifteen more minutes I think we could have computed the different slopes of the elevator graph, which was our launch problem. We used the unit-rate concept that the students had used for their warm up to touch on the floors per second rate. I don’t think the group totally understood this as we ran out of time to really drive the idea in. It was nice to see the kids enjoy using the CBRs and after two sessions of using them I could see the CBRs as being very useful to explore slope ideas in the classroom. It would be nice to see these students again for a second day so we could build on the discoveries we made today. We may have not gotten to each and every objective of our lesson, but the students were making progress and almost accomplished all of our goals.
Mike Freeland
I only had two students to work with this time, and I was very encouraged with the progress they made. Both students took turns holding the calculator and walking and had very good insights into what walking patterns caused which type of graph. By the end of the class period, we were even discussing what the y-axis and x-axis meant. I felt this students cooperated with me and listened well, so we were able to make it through a number of sample graphs. One thing we tried today that we did not try with last week's lesson was to have students actually write down their ideas for how to walk. I thought this was great because it forced them to put their thoughts into words as well as gave us a good indicator of what they were thinking. While we never mentioned the word slope, I think these students began to understand how rates of change related to a graph, and this will hopefully be useful for future discussion in their mathematics classroom.
Mandi Mills
I had a group where one of the students was one of the student I observed the first time we were at linden grove, however I also got two students I hadn't met and they felt as though they should play tricks on me and tell me what they thought would be funny. After introductions and launching into the lesson I felt like the only student in the group who was taking the assignment even semi-serious was the young lady I had observed before. I was extremely disappointed because they seemed to be just throwing out what they thought I wanted to hear and not thinking at all about what it meant mathematically. At the end even the young lady who I felt like I was getting through to seemed to only want the answers and to not have to think about what the graph meant and what the concept meant. This was a complete shock for me as I had taught the advanced class both of the other times and they were extremely willing to work where as these average students seemed uninterested and unwilling to work on the assignment given. Overall I say it was much harder to teach to the middle than to the higher level students.
Denise Slate
My field experience the other day was reasonable. I felt I was able to give them information more efficiently in their learning development. I started graphs on paper first then I introduced the ranger program. I liked how I changed my lesson plan also to help benefit students needs. The use of simple algorithms helped the students better understand the use of simple units to determine slope. The rise over run equation was better for students to also understand what slope meant. Compared to my last lesson i feel a gained a better understanding of asking students questions that made them gain an understanding of the mathematics being involved.
Fredrick Martin
I felt that this lesson went really well, but I did run out of time at the end of class and was not able to leave them with a good summary. The three students that I were able to get the graphs to look just like we wanted them, and the students holding the CBR and calculator did a really good job coaching the student walking the graph. Just like last class, the students wanted to try walking the graph before talking about what they were going to do and all had different ideas of what to do. When I was able to get them to explain how they were going to walk the graph they were all good with figuring out when they needed to walk faster or slower, figuring out the distance to walk and for how long. I really liked teaching this lesson because you are getting up and out of your seat, and the students are kept pay attention throughout the lesson because it is something that they have never done before that is fun for them.
Bret Van Zanten
For my final field experience I must admit I was not very happy with the way it went. I know that we did not have enough students for the second hour group to teach, which was the hour that I taught. This ended up with me having two students who were borrowed from another class. I felt that this was unfair because the two boys I had did not seem to want to be there and seemed quite unenthusiastic about the lesson. I was not expecting this because the previous lessons before Tori’s from first hour and the with the groups from Mr. Wine’s class went very well and the kids seemed to enjoy working with the CBRs. I didn’t really know how to get them excited and sort of fell into the trap of wanting the lesson to just be over with. I wish I would have gotten to teach students that were actually in Ms. Yarger’s second hour to see if it was because these students were just helping out and not really wanting to be or if it was something I was doing.
Kaitlin Froehlke
Overall, I am pleased with how my final field experience turned out. I still funneled a little, but compared to the other two lessons, I improved. This was my second time teaching only two students. I like how students got more one on one attention, but it is nice to have more students that can contribute different ideas. The students enjoyed working with the CBRs, so I was able to have fun with the lesson, which made it more enjoyable. I feel I was able to conclude this lesson better than I did the first time I taught it. I believe this made all the difference when it comes to my opinion on the lesson. The first time teaching rates of change, I was so down on myself because I felt I didn't wrap anything up. I made sure to fix that for this experience, and it worked out well!
Hailey McDonell